Serve by Design

After getting home from another graveside service yesterday, one of our grown children exclaimed, “Dad you seem to have had a lot of funerals lately!” And it is true that I have had a funeral and committal service three out of the last four weeks. Sadly, this has happened many times over the past fifty years in my pastoral ministry! This is just another season in our church life! Image: adobestock.com As we continued to discuss the frequency of these recent deaths in our church, even the funeral director remarked, “As care pastor, I’m sure you keep quite busy officiating funerals in such a large congregation!” And I agreed, while noting that our two full-time pastors are also ministering to several families dealing with loss and grief. Not all of these have been with older adults either. Our community has also dealt with the loss of some precious children. But it was one of our middle-aged sons who thoughtfully remarked with this probing question from his experience in large city chu...

We recently celebrated what would have been the ninth birthday of our beloved granddaughter, Kayley Janelle. She was only given to her family for a fleeting time of about sixty days before a severe heart defect and catastrophic stroke prematurely shut down her precious little life. Every time we visit the cemetery we are painfully reminded of how we would have loved on and delighted in her! Kayley's Ninth Birthday! On this occasion, we brought a special dessert drink with whipped topping from the local coffee shop. It was our way of commemorating in a tangible way just how much we miss those everyday opportunities to spoil Kayley! There would have been special “date times” to eat at her favorite soup and sandwich shops and chat about her school and social activities. At this season, we would have loved to hear her screams of delight when she opened her gifts, large and small, along with the entire family! Life has a way of changing things! Our hopes and longings can be dashed to pi...

I am sure that my eyes used to “glaze over” a little when older adults in our church began talking about their illnesses, doctor appointments and exploratory procedures. Now that I am one of those Medicare card-carrying seniors, I have joined the ranks of my peers who delight in droning on with numerous war stories! We had another procedure this week that required general anesthesia. By now we know the regimen because of experiences with past colonoscopies! The drill at the clinic surgery center has become all too familiar! Image credit: depositphotos.com This time it was an endoscopy. The first for either one of us. Monique has had a persistent cough for months now and our endocrinologist decided to clinically scope her “food pipe” as he referred to it. Technology has advanced to the point that the scope is equipped to take a biopsy, stretch or dilate any narrowed areas, and it is also fitted with a camera to document everything discovered with numerous pictures. All of this is quite ...

The matter of family history has come up many times during our recent visit with my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, a French citizen. She has been gathering facts and photos on our Breffort family for some time now. Many of these resources are from close family members who are still alive and able to recall their conversations with those who have passed away. Some memories are passed down through oral stories by extended family. And other sources are hand-written government documents that specifically record the dates, settings and names of family. It is often tedious and time consuming to record a family history. It is also painful to consider some of the losses that occurred during times of war. The Breffort's Sons: Lucien (left) and André Mother: Jeanne (center), Daughter: Mireille (right front) I did not realize that Monique, Phil and Elizabeth's grandmother, Mireille Breffort, had tragically lost both of her brothers during World War I and that these beloved family members were ...